Instagram analytics: strategies to leverage your data for growth

A comprehensive understanding of social media analytics is crucial for businesses seeking to improve their sales, customer service and community engagement. Instagram analytics is one of the many tools you can use to uncover more about your audience on social media. Whether you know a lot about analytics or you're new to it, this detailed guide to Instagram analytics will teach you everything you need to know.

What are Instagram analytics?

Instagram analytics refers to the collection of data and performance metrics for your posts and account. Instagram analytics help you better understand your audience from when they’re most active to the type of content they enjoy engaging with most. For example, you can view likes, comments, shares, impressions and other metrics by tracking Instagram analytics. Monitoring these analytics is an essential part of creating and iterating ‌your Instagram marketing strategy.

7 benefits of using Instagram analytics

Instagram analytics enables you to track your performance, learn more about your audience and spot trends through important metrics like engagement, reach and content interactions. Let’s review some of the benefits of using Instagram analytics.

1. Identify performance and market trends with advanced Instagram analytics

Instagram analytics have transformed from foundational metrics such as likes and followers to comprehensive data sets that offer deeper insights into user behavior and content performance. Social media analytics has changed how brands manage their social media presence. Instead of reacting to trends, brands can now use analytics to proactively thrive on platforms like Instagram.

Advanced Instagram analytics software provides detailed information on performance trends, audience demographics, user engagement patterns‌ and conversion rates, enabling marketers to craft highly targeted, effective strategies. For example, Instagram analytics reveal the best times to post and the types of posts that perform well (e.g. static images vs. animation or video). Analytics also highlight growth trends and downturns like seasonal variations in audience interaction. Paying attention to these insights empowers you to strategically plan content releases for maximum impact. For instance, are your Instagram Reels outperforming your posts? Is your follower growth consistent? What about your publishing frequency? Your numbers will clue you in on how to approach your account.

Instagram analytics tools are also important for high-level social media marketing. They let you track and measure the success of your campaigns, while predicting market trends so you can adjust strategies in real time. The use of advanced Instagram analytics supports data-driven decisions, optimizing resource allocation and maximizing return on investment (ROI) in competitive digital landscapes.

2. Analytics metrics reap strategic implications

Although Instagram metrics like engagement and reach provide insights, incorporating sophisticated metrics can help you gain broader or narrower information. For instance, follower sentiment, Story completion rate and save rate offer a more nuanced understanding of audience behavior. Follower sentiment reveals the emotional resonance of content, which can guide creative, tone and messaging for future campaigns.

Story completion rate can influence pacing or storytelling techniques for posts. It could also help with ad placement and timing. Save rate provides a peek into long-term value and relevance for audiences, which can help with evergreen content planning. Overall, advanced Instagram metrics like these help refine strategic decisions.

3. Advanced content strategy development

Social practitioners are tasked with the challenge of maneuvering the ever-changing landscape of social media. Think: updates to the Instagram algorithm. But understanding what content resonates with your audience the most will always start with your Instagram analytics. By looking at analytics, you can see which content types get the most attention and when your audience is most active. You can view social media demographics like age and location. These insights can help you plan and improve future content to match what your audience likes, increasing engagement rates and building stronger connections.

Beyond recreating top-performing content based on historic data, Instagram analytics can support social media experimentation. By integrating A/B testing with analytics, you can play around with different content variables—such as imagery, hashtags and call-to-actions—to systematically refine and optimize your content strategy. With this approach, you can identify subtle nuances in audience preferences and behavior. Overall, Instagram can help you develop a data story to explain your content decisions, account growth and performance to teammates, managers and other stakeholders.

4. Audience segmentation and personalization

Instagram analytics help facilitate advanced audience segmentation and personalization strategies. Marketers can refine market or customer groups by incorporating psychographic factors like interests, lifestyle, values and beliefs. This level of segmentation enables you to create more curated social media marketing campaigns that speak directly to the nuances of each customer group.

5. Trend analysis and anticipatory adjustments

Social media analytics tools use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which can help with trendspotting. By using these predictive capabilities, marketers can analyze data patterns, such as changes in user engagement, popular hashtags‌ and visual content preferences, to predict future trends. For example, Pinterest Predicts uses machine learning to predict trends in different areas, like beauty and lifestyle, wellness, and parenting.

By integrating these insights, you can proactively adjust your content strategy to ensure it remains relevant and future-proof. For example, if predictive analytics indicate an increasing interest in a specific theme or style,  you can incorporate those elements into campaigns.

6. Integration of cross-network insights

Social teams are managing multiple social media networks. By monitoring Instagram analytics with other networks, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your overall social media performance. By connecting your Instagram and other accounts to a social media management platform like Sprout, you can view and track cross-network analytics in one centralized dashboard. This integrated approach ensures that a unified set of data informs strategies, leading to more cohesive social media marketing efforts that drive impact.

7. Analyze your competition on Instagram to create benchmarks

Instagram analytics support thorough analysis of competitor strategies. You can see how your brand measures up to industry peers by monitoring your competitors’ most engaging content, follower growth and engagement tactics. These insights are important for benchmarking your performance and refining your strategy to standout in a saturated social media environment.

Creating an Instagram competitors report helps you identify content gaps and opportunities for your brand. It'll also present context through data to justify your decision-making. For example, if you notice your competitors’ accounts rarely engage with comments, it might be a sign to prioritize interacting with your audience.

How to view Instagram analytics

You can access native Instagram analytics on the app, or use a social media management solution, like Sprout.

How to view Instagram analytics using account insights

You need to have a creator or business account on Instagram to access your account insights. Note: You'll only be able to see insights for content you’ve posted since converting to a business/creator account.

If you have a creator or business account already, follow the steps below to access the data:

1. From your profile, tap ≡ in the top right corner.
2. Then, tap Insights.
3. Tap the metrics underneath the Overview section or specific content you’ve shared for more details. From here, you can also view your audience overview, content summary, top-performing posts, etc. You can also view insights using a custom timeframe or preset

The overview provides a big-picture view and understanding of your IG presence and growth. That said, it's only a taste of what you can learn from your numbers. Your Instagram audience insights are a treasure trove of data to help you boost your engagement and grow your account.

And boom, you’re done! Let’s cover how you can use Sprout.

How to view Instagram analytics using Sprout Social

Here are the steps for accessing Instagram analytics using Sprout:

1. Sign up for a free trial with Sprout Social and log in with your business email.

2. Connect your social media accounts to Sprout Social if you haven’t already. You can view the steps in this support article. If your social profiles are already connected, proceed to the next step.

3. Click on the Report icon on the left toolbar. From the Reports home, click Profiles by Network.
4. Click Instagram Business Profiles. From here, you'll see an overview of your Instagram business/creator accounts. View organic and paid impressions, engagement rate, audience growth, publishing behavior and more. The Instagram Business Profiles dashboard also has tabs for benchmarking, demographics and profile data.

You can use Sprout’s features to dig deeper so you get more out of your social media analytics to create real business impact. Our platform gives you a holistic view of your social media data and marketing presence, along with the ability to publish and cross-post content and messages.

You can compare your Instagram analytics with other social media platforms. To do this, just export different reports a side-by-side comparison.

3 Instagram analytics tools to use

There's no shortage of Instagram analytics tools out there. Here are three Instagram analytics software you can use to uncover insights.

Sprout Social

Instagram's native analytics features are granular and easy to use, so we give well-deserved credit to IG’s features. But we encourage brands to dive deeper into their analytics so they can take action based on those insights.

Take a look at our Competitors Report below. This report highlights your share of voice alongside hashtag performance. These insights offer specific, actionable ways to fine-tune your content strategy and positioning.

Having a central place for your social channels means you don’t have to bounce between platforms, saving you time and effort. Sprout also enables you to view which content types and networks are performing best. Consolidated analytics and cross-posting can be a game-changer for busy brands.

Sprout's suite of comprehensive Instagram listening features enables brands to actively track competitors, key terms, preferred content format, sentiment and more. You can also review your share of voice and the Instagram hashtags you’re dominating.

Experience Sprout’s Instagram analytics software by signing up for a free trial.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare also allows you to view your social media accounts on one platform. They offer over 100 measures for your social media content strategy. You can view your most influential hashtag users, top-performing content, follower location and much more. They also offer publishing, media management and competitor analysis tools.

Phlanx

Phlanx offers a variety of Instagram analytics tools including an engagement and post likes calculator, along with a competitor tracking tool. You can view a variety of metrics including engagement rate by video view, total weekly interactions and engagement by latest post.

34 key advanced Instagram metrics to track

The dozens of dashboards in front of you might seem a bit intimidating. Don't panic! Let’s explore 34 Instagram metrics and walk through what they mean. You’ll see these metrics via Instagram Insights or using an Instagram analytics tool.

Advanced Instagram awareness metrics

1. Reach or content reach: The total number of unique viewers a post has. Reach is often confused with impressions because they are similar. Here’s a quick explainer: If you were to see a post three times, that’s considered three impressions, but you would only count as one person reached.

2. Reach by region: The number of unique users who have seen your content, segmented by geographical location. So you know which areas are more engaged with your content.

3. Impressions: The number of times an individual piece of content was displayed to users. Instagram impressions can reveal how well you’re promoting your account, content, campaigns, ads, etc.

4. Profile visits: The total number of times users have visited your social media profile over a specific period. This metric is useful for gauging interest in your brand.

5. Brand mentions: The number representing how often your brand is mentioned on social media platforms. This can include social mentions like direct @-mentions in comments, captions and Stories. It helps to measure brand visibility and engagement.

6. Branded hashtags: The number of times others use the hashtags specifically created for your brand or campaign. This aids with tracking the impact of campaigns or promotions. You can view hashtag analytics in Instagram natively or using a social media management tool.

7. Share of voice: The measure of the market your brand owns compared to your competitors. Share of voice measures the amount of conversations about your brand compared to competitors. It acts as a gauge for your brand visibility and how much you dominate the conversation in your industry. The more market share you have, the greater popularity and authority you likely have among users and prospective customers.

8. Content you shared: This includes any content you've posted and shared across Stories, feeds and video.

9. Content interactions: Any action users take when they like, share, save, comment or reply to your content.

10. Saves: The number of times a post has been bookmarked.

11. Shares: The number of times a post/content was sent to another user via Instagram.

12. Plays: The number of times a video plays on Instagram, which includes when the video plays automatically or if someone clicks to play the video.

13. Instagram Stories views: The amount of people who viewed an Instagram Story. You can also see replies, impressions and navigation for each slide in a Story.

Engagement metrics

14. Engagement rate: This metric refers to the percentage of your following that's engaged with your content whether it's liking, commenting, sharing or saving.

15. Engagement rate by follower: This metric calculates the engagement (likes, comments, shares) a post receives relative to the number of followers you have. It provides a percentage to assess how effectively your content resonates with your audience.

16. Saved posts: The number of times users save your posts. This metric indicates the value or interest users find in your content because they want to refer to it later.

17. Comments per post: The average number of comments each post receives. This metric shows how much your content prompts conversations.

18. Click-through-rate: The percentage of people who see an Instagram ad and click on it. It helps measure how effective your paid content is at driving action.

19. Video completion rate: The percentage of people who viewed content from beginning to end on Instagram Stories and Reels.

20. Accounts engaged: This refers to the number of unique accounts that interacted with your content. This includes demographics information from the profiles you reached, including gender, top cities and countries and age ranges.

21. Accounts reached: The number of unique accounts that have seen your content at least once. This includes the demographic information on the accounts you reached, such as top cities and countries, age ranges and gender. It also includes your followers and non-followers.

22. Live interactions: The number of comments and shares for a stream on Instagram Live.

23. Peak concurrent viewers: This refers to the busiest point of the livestream when there were the most viewers.

24. Accounts reached during broadcast: The number of profiles that came across the livestream.

25. Most engaged hashtags: Your top-performing hashtags with the highest engagement. Instagram hashtags encourage engagement and provide another lens on your audience and what they are searching for on the platform.

Other metrics to track

26. Total followers: The sum of every profile that follows your account, View your follower growth, top locations, age ranges and times they’re most active on Instagram.

27. Follower growth rate: The percentage rate your followers are increasing over a specific period to the number of followers at the start of that period.

28. Engagement rate by reach: This metric measures the engagement a post receives relative to the number of unique users who saw the post. It provides insight into how engaging your content is to those who see it, not just your followers.

29. Click-through rate from bio: The number of clicks generated from the links included in your bio relative to the number of profile visits.

30. Story completion rate: The percentage of viewers who watch your entire Instagram Story from start to finish without skipping. This metric is useful for evaluating how compelling your Stories are.

31. Audience growth over time: The amount of followers you lost or gained over time.

32. Audience demographics: The age, gender, location or other characteristics of your followers. Instagram’s native analytics data include audience demographics (age, gender, location). These data points can highlight whether you're getting in front of your target audience via Instagram or not.

33. Traffic: The number of visitors Instagram drives to your website.

34. Instagram ad analytics: This refers to the performance data available for Instagram advertising. You can check Instagram ad analytics in a few ways, including Ads Manager. It shows your campaign performance overview, demographics, delivery data, campaign spend and cost per result.

Elevate your Instagram analytics for strategic growth

Growing your presence and creating content that resonates requires digging into Instagram analytics data. While you can see data from native analytics, a social media management tool like Sprout will uncover more advanced insights you can translate into action on Instagram and beyond. See for yourself by signing up for a free trial of Sprout Social today.